Scottish Doctor, author, speaker, sceptic

What causes heart disease part 56 – a new paper

As you may know I am a member of an organisation known as The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics (THINCS). When I say this, people always laugh. I suppose it is better than people shouting and screaming and slapping you repeatedly. The man who set it up was Uffe Ravnskov – our glorious leader.

He has done far better than me. His first book The Cholesterol Myths, was burnt, live on air, in a television studio in Finland. I am very jealous. Having your critics become so enraged, that the only thing they can think to do is burn your book, is a very great ‘sceptic’ honour. Although one must be slightly fearful that the mob doesn’t stop at burning your books.

Uffe has written many books and papers in this area, and from time to time I have been honoured to help him. Most recently we have battered away, trying to get a paper published on blood clotting factors in Familial Hypercholesterolaemia. Many rejections, and many years later. Hoorah.

We can provide fifty days free access to this paper, before the pay wall comes down. To make it free access forever would cost us thousands, and since none of us gets paid a bean for any of this work, this would be far too costly for a bunch of (in this area) independent researchers.

You need to be a major university, or a pharmaceutical company to make your papers free access. Although such are the costs that even these organisations are baulking. As Richard Smith– who edited the BMJ for many years – said ‘The function of medical journals used to be to make research freely available to all. It is now to keep it hidden.’ Or words to that effect.

Anyway, a quick summary of this paper would be that it is not the raised LDL that causes an increased risk of CVD in familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) – such as the risk may be, in some individuals. It is the fact that FH is also genetically linked to inborn areas of blood clotting abnormalities.

Which means that some of those with FH also have raised factor VIII and fibrinogen levels (there are also issues with the LDL receptor itself, which plays an important role in blood clotting – not covered in this paper). Our contention is that it is these factors that are important, not the LDL level. The data, as we analysed it, supports this contention.

Here is the abstract:

‘High low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) is routinely described as the main cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). However, numerous observations are in conﬂict with Bradford Hill’s criteria for causality: a) degree of atherosclerosis is not associated with LDL-C; b) on average the life span of people with FH is about the same as for other people; c) LDL-C of people with FH without CVD is almost as high as in FH patients of the same age with CVD; and d) questionable beneﬁt or none at all have been achieved in the controlled, randomized cholesterol-lowering trials that have included FH individuals only. Obviously, those individuals with FH who suﬀer from CVD may have inherited other and more important risk factors of CVD than high LDL-C. In accordance, several studies of FH individuals have shown that various coagulation factors may cause CVD. Equally, some non-FH members of an FH kindred with early CVD, have been found to suﬀer from early CVD as well. The cholesterol-lowering trials have only been successful by using apheresis, a technique that also removes many coagulation factors, or in an animal experiment by using probucol, which has anticoagulant eﬀects as well. We conclude that systematic studies of all kinds of risk factors among FH individuals are urgently required, because today millions of people with FH are treated with statins, the beneﬁt of which in FH is unproven, and which have many serious side eﬀects. We predict that treatment of FH individuals with elevated coagulation factors with anticoagulative drugs is more eﬀective than statin treatment alone.’

Of course, this paper also supports my hypothesis that increased tendency to blood clotting (hypercoagulability) is one of the key processes in both accelerated atherosclerotic plaque formation, and the development of the final, fatal, blood clot.

268 thoughts on “What causes heart disease part 56 – a new paper”

I am just seeing the abstract via your link, no button for full text. Is that coming?
Uffe changed my life in the early 2000s with his book translated into English. I had always just accepted the ‘butter & eggs are bad for you’, though I could not see why given our evolution, and I was not a fanatic avoider.

When I first read this (link posted on Mark’s Daily Apple) about ten days ago, I was surprised to know that people with FH have a similar life span to those without. Now it will be interesting to read the entire paper, and learn more about clotting factors.

However, when you mess with coagulation, you open a can of worms. If you can’t normalize coagulation exactly, can you get bleeding. Perhaps the bleeding is slight – not even noticeable . . . until you get conditions such as anemia. Anemia is not pretty. Low red cell count = perpetual tiredness, shortness of breath, slower healing, palpitations, etc. (My anticoagulation happens to be for “palpitations”. Irony)
Life is a trade-off: you get a longer miserable life, or you get a shorter one.

What am I missing?

One thing is the full article.
The paywall seems to be up. ‘Cause I’m in the U S? ‘Cause I can’t find the right button to push on your linked page?

Great paper! The ideas of clotting and platelets have been around for a long time, but apparently were put aside when lipids became the villain. Forty-five years ago, because I’m FH, researchers slit my arm (no warning!) to measure clotting time, and centrifuged out my platelets. Both tests reported that my clotting was “normal”. So, today, with extreme lipids for a lifetime and “normal” clotting function I have no plaque! Hmmm. Which hypothesis is supported?

Thank you for allowing us to read your excellent paper. So the stranglehold on medical information is if it is possibly against the accepted dogma, it will be prohibitively expensive to put in the public sphere, whilst possibly dodgy research is not released to the public because of patent infringement?

Wow, this is a timely post! I was just thinking about Familial Hypercholesterolemia today- (yeah, I know; I’m a geek). I was thinking it can’t be the high LDL that’s a problem, but some other factor, possibly as yet unexplained. And low and behold, you answered my query! Very interesting. I think the blood clotting factor makes much more sense than the high LDL.

David Diamond is: Professor, Departments of Psychology, Molecular Pharmacology
and Physiology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Floridaf http://psychology.usf.edu/faculty/data/ddiamond_cv.pdf He became interested in CVD when he found he had a very high triglyceride and low HDL level. He then began his own research into the area and came to the conclusion that the diet heart/cholesterol hypotheses was bunk. He is a very bright guy, really bright. He is another of those who chose to look at the research and evidence for himself. He found, like many others, that we have been sold a massive pup. He, like me, found that once your eyes are opened, they can never again be shut. We communicate regularly.

Still no joy downloading. The Download PDF link still wants to know what kind of institution I am… I’m not an institution, the paper is probably going to be over my head, but maybe not – and i’d love to have it to show my doctors. Thanks so much for making it free AND for the extra hassle that’s giving you!

As I have mentioned before I never believed in the cholesterol hypothesis. The trigger for me to renew my interest in this field were the 2013 ABC Catylst episodes on statins and saturated fat. Shortly after that I discovered:
(a) Uffe Ravnskov
(b) Your blog/books
In fact..the first two books I bought were yours and his. Both of you laid down slam dunk arguments against the cholesterol hypothesis…and here I am 5 years later…still hanging on your every word. I applaud you both.

Thank you. Another tree that the dear little expert doggies will fail to bark up.
I see in todays Times that our frien Dr Malhotra is being censured for helping the polititian Tom Watson wth his excellent weght loss by the disapproved method of carb restriction.

Yes, Uffe Ravnskov was also one of my first heros among the skeptics in the medical world and he certainly paid a high prize already in the beginning of his carrier when he blow the whistle noticing flagrant fraud of a research colleague. The corruption of the system was evident when it turned out that it was Uffe Ravnskov who was the one who had to leave his position at the hospital.

In retrospective this might though have been fortunate event for our knowledge about the cholesterol scam since Ravnskov then turned to be a completely independent researcher and pioneered the scrutinizing.

I always show a picture of him and one of his books when lecturing about how to restore health through proper LCHF food – e.g. in order to revert diabetes.

BTW in Sweden any restaurant will be severely fined if claiming LCHF on their menu. You may wonder what corrupt people and interests are behind such prohibitions and behind the witch hunt on honest, open minded and brave people in the medical community as our Dr. Annika Dahlqvist, Prof. Tim Noakes and Dr. Gary Fettke and of course our own present hero who I don’t need to mention by name here 🙂

What a Kafka world we are living in!

And what an uphill fight against the corruption of the science in medicine.

Perhaps an elevated LDC is not the villain but one of the bodies signals that something is wrong. It would be easy to blame 911 first responders for causing road traffic accidents. Afterall they are always present at a crash scene. My money is on a lack of vitamin D and Magnesium, and manufactured food that depletes the body of vitamin C whilst providing very little nutrients and sending Insulin/Glucose all over the place. My next door neighbour is 98 years old – she religiously eats eggs for breakfast, salad for lunch and a cooked meal on evening. Not a takeaway or ready meal in sight.

Aa far as I remember one of the oldest living woman did the same thing – egg every day!
I guess egg IS life!

Perhaps egg is even better than meat which though was claimed, already 2500 years ago, by the first historian Herodotos, to be the actual reason that the Ethiopians, who only ate cooked meat, could reach the mature age of 140! – believe it or not.

You might be right in this – it was certainly very though to travel through dry deserts to Ethiopia at that time (I think the Persians never succeeded in there mission to conquer this people due to this fact) although Herodotos travelled wide and far. But still, as far as I remember on top of my head, I read this “story” in Herodotos’ history and he might have acquired this information “second hand”.

Herodotus was the first historian. He had not got the benefit of reading other historians by way of research – and he had a major difficulty in knowiing who was telling him facts, and who was shooting a line for self-aggrandisement. Something we are accustomed to hereabouts. . . fromtime to time.

In the time of Herodotus, checking the facts or examining sources wasn’t part of a historian’s job, and he notoriously didn’t. Even sailors’ tall tales of monsters etc. Writing histories in his world was about finding entertaining stories – and his certainly are. One of the few bits of “literature” that I didn’t mind having forced down my throat at school!

I have a whole different theory about the much longer lifespans claimed in days of yore. 😉

Indeed. Along with fibrinogen. It depends, the LDL receptor also plays and important role in controlling the metabolism of various clotting factors, and this differs with different genetic causes of FH.

But Doc, just a short time ago you pointed out that such a large molecule as “lipoprotein” can’t force its way behind the endothelium, that the cholesterol in plaque is crystalline – an impossible state for lipoprotein, and that the crystalline cholesterol in plaque is largely from red cell membrane remains.
Does LP(a) rush to be incorporated in a forming clot at a greater concentration than in ambient blood… before the coagulation door is closed?
Then LP(a) = LDL?
What are the ratios of the various constituents of clot/plaque?
(Blast! And here I thought I had it all straight….. You’re being facetious. Right??)

Lp(a) is designed to bind very strongly to areas of damaged artery wall. It cannot be removed by tissue plasminogen activator (TPa), because the apolipoprotein (a) is designed to block the actions of TPa. Thus, clot with Lp(a) incorporated into it cannot be broken down, and it then must be incorporated into the artery wall. Lp(a) is LDL with an additional protein/apolipoprotein attached to it.

I did not say that the cholesterol in the plaque is crystalline. I said that there are cholesterol crystals in plaque, and that these could only come from the membranes of red blood cells. The cholesterol in LDL and Lp(a) is esterified – which means it is bound to a fatty acid. Fatty acid + cholesterol = cholesterol ester.

When researchers identify LDL within plaque, what they are identifying (primarily) is Lp(a). Because these two molecules appear identical in structure – unless you choose to look for the apolipoprotein (a), which is never done. Or, to be more accurate, one of the only people who has looked specifically for Lp(a)/apolipoprotein (a) in plaque is Matthias Rath. He found it in high concentrations – no-one else has bothered to look., apart from Elspeth Smith The ‘experts’ in CVD see LDL, because they are looking for LDL. If you choose to look for Lp(a) that is what you see instead.

Right. Complicated. Thanks. I must have missed earlier descriptions of LP(a).

So. When you say that everyone undergoes injury and the trick is to keep healing ahead of injury, you’re saying that the permanent inclusion of LP(a) in the arterial wall is a defining element of healing.
??

It ‘heals’ the area of damage, then needs to be cleared up. The more Lp(a) the bigger. and more difficult to break down. the resultant blood clot will be. Lp(a) is great at protecting arteries damaged by, say vitamin C depletion, but there is a resultant cost to pay. More difficult to remove blood clots. This tips the balance towards healing < damage

I tried over and over to open the article since this post was posted.
Now suddenly I made it! And I hadn’t even signed in yet. There was a link on the top saying “download PDF” and it worked.
After 2 or 3 minutes I tried it again and the link wasn’t there any more! In its place was “Check Access”

The same happened to me as to Ana Amado – pure luck, the download link appears and disappears like that mythical Scottish village. I was lucky and managed to download it shortly after asking here.

Sorry not to reply here sooner, but something was up with WordPress and I couldn’t see that my comments were reaching the thread, let alone replies. Only realised just now that you replied (thank you). I’d given up on explaining that I no longer needed help!

Interesting! After reading came up question about possible links in my own situation. Background – FHC, 5 stents after 4 episodes, first at age 45. Niece and other niece’s daughter confirmed Leiden Factor 8 – own never tested. Always believed stress was major contributing factor in own situation. So the thought process after reading the article – link between stress and coagulation? A bit of a search did come up with some studies demonstrating hypercoagulation after stress. (e.g https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17586337).

So the hypothesis: Persistent high levels of stress (increased adrenalin and cortisol) leads to hypercoagulation and with added increased Factor VIII it puts it over the top? Btw. when the Factor VIII issue came up in our family I asked my cardiologist whether it might be a contributing factor and he said it only affects the venous system and had no link with CVD.

Get where you’re coming from. Ive put a remark below (before reading yours) about magnesium. If you suffer prolonged periods if stress, and yes this causes clotted, slow moving blood, try usung magnesium (as well as juicing and staying hydrated) and B3. All excellent for anxiety/stress and many other things. Check out Dr Carolyn Dean and ReMag. All the best x

Hope however that due to clotting being the culprit you’d advocate taking water (which increases blood flow) and of course magnesium, which also helps (thins) blood flow as well as having a myriad of other benefits?

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/55/2/480.long
Coagulation activation.
Hyperglycemia elicited coagulation and fibrinolysis, as reflected by the increased thrombin generation (F1 + 2) as well as increased fibrinolysis (d-dimer). Our data are in line with those from studies showing that induction of acute hyperglycemia in healthy volunteers increases plasma levels of coagulation factor VIIa and stimulates tissue factor–dependent activation of coagulation (35). The endothelial glycocalyx is a crucial compartment for binding and regulating enzymes involved in the coagulation cascade. In addition, the most important inhibitor of thrombin and factor Xa (i.e., antithrombin) is firmly attached to the endothelium (36). In support of this, we and others have previously demonstrated that glycocalyx perturbation has direct effects on coagulation and fibrinolytic responses (9,37). It is therefore not surprising that hyperglycemia-induced loss of glycocalyx is accompanied by activation of coagulation.

My ex-cardiologist shot himself in both feet…when he aggressively asserted ’12 months of intense, mental/emotional STRESS’ (mishandled, but…) had no level of responsibility for ‘All my arteries clotting’.
Oddly, I’ve yet to find ANY medical professional who agrees with him, – quite the opposite, with a Physiotherapist suggesting the mechanism to be (stress-induced…) Autonomic Nervous System dis-regulation, – continually living in ‘Fight/Flight’ mode.
– and that without him reading your blog !

So, let’s assume we believe that coagulation gone awry is the cause of heart disease. Is there a test (assuming no FH) we can take that lets us know how well or not well our coagulation “system” is working?

Also, minor point of contention. While I think that “inflammation” is the body’s way of repair, I think it’s possible that things that cause constant/chronic inflammation to the body are not good. I think reduction in those things is good, and this reduction would come along with reduction in “inflammation”. That is, if you reduce outside influences (different foods, oils, lack of sleep, stress, etc.) that cause the body to react by causing inflammation, you’ll be healthier. If this makes any sense. 😉

I am not sure why you think that is contentious. If you are referring to Dr. Kendrick saying that inflammation = healing, what (I think) he means to say is that people err when they try to target inflammation itself without ceasing its cause. So when you say that we should reduce things which cause inflammation, that is of course a good idea. See, no sprained ankle – no inflammation. But if you sprain your ankle, don’t use ice and anti inflammatories to block your body’s ability to heal via inflammatory processes.

AnnaM: Yes. I think what Dr. Kendrick means is that inflammation is an essential immune system response to acute injury or infection; in the case of the vasculature, which can suffer frequent injury in certain places, it is an ongoing injury/repair process. A wonderful thing, indeed. Chronic inflammation caused by environmental, or rarely, genetic factors is another matter entirely. Best reduce or eliminate those environmental triggers.

I’m saying that it’s possible the things that cause “inflammation” can cause health issues, such as (high) Omega 6 fatty acids. In this case, the inflammation elicited by the body is because of an input to the body that is deleterious. Blindly saying “inflammation is good” in this context is, I believe, misguided.

Oransky told AFP that what has emerged so far is only the tip of the iceberg.

Three prominent US scientists have been pushed to resign over the past 10 days after damning revelations about their methods, a sign of greater vigilance and decreasing tolerance for misconduct within the research community.

Investigative journalism group ProPublica and The New York Times revealed on September 8 that Baselga failed to disclose in dozens of research articles that he had received millions of dollars from pharmaceutical and medical companies.

Such declarations are generally required by scientific journals.

Links between a doctor leading a clinical trial and manufacturers of drugs or medical equipment used in the study can influence the methodology and ultimately the results.

But journals don’t themselves verify the thoroughness of an author’s declarations.

Caught up in the scandal, Baselga resigned on September 13.

Next came the case of Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at the prestigious Cornell University.

He made his name thanks to studies that garnered plenty of media attention, including on pizza, and the appetites of children.

His troubles began last year when scientific sleuths discovered anomalies and surprisingly positive results in dozens of his articles.

In February, BuzzFeed published messages in which Wansink encouraged a researcher to extract from her data results more likely to go “viral.”

After a yearlong inquiry, Cornell announced on Thursday that Wansink committed “academic misconduct in his research and scholarship,” describing a litany of problems with his results and methods.

He is set to resign at the end of the academic year, but from now on will no longer teach there.

Wansink denied all fraud, but 13 of his articles have already been withdrawn by journals.

In the final case, Gilbert Welch, a professor of public health at Dartmouth College, resigned last week.

The university accused him of plagiarism in an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the most respected American medical journal.

– Cutting corners –
“The good news is that we are finally starting to see a lot of these cases become public,” said Ivan Oransky co-founder of the site Retraction Watch, a project of the Center for Scientific Integrity that keeps tabs on retractions of research articles in thousands of journals.

Oransky told AFP that what has emerged so far is only the tip of the iceberg.

The problem, he said, is that scientists, and supporters of science, have often been unwilling to raise such controversies “because they’re afraid that talking about them will decrease trust in science and that it will aid and abet anti-science forces.”

But silence only encourages bad behavior, he argued. According to Oransky, more transparency will in fact only help the public to better comprehend the scientific process.

“At the end of the day, we need to think about science as a human enterprise, we need to remember that it’s done by humans,” he said. “Let’s remember that humans make mistakes, they cut corners, sometimes worse.”

Attention has long focused on financial conflicts of interest, particularly because of the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.

But the Wansink case illustrates that other forms of conflict, including reputational, are equally important. Academic careers are largely built on how much one publishes and in which journals.

As a result, researchers compete to produce positive, new and clear results — but work that produces negative results or validates previous findings should also be rewarded, argued Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia who heads the pro-transparency Center for Open Science.

“Most of the work when we’re at the boundary of science is messy, has exceptions, has things that don’t quite fit,” he explained, while “the bad part of the incentives environment is that the reward system is all about the result.”

While moves toward more transparency have gathered momentum over the past decade, in particular among publishers of research articles, there is still a long way to go, said Nosek.

“Culture change is hard,” he argued, adding: “Universities and medical centers are the slowest actors.”

I read about Brian Wansink. He’s not a fraud, he’s a publicity hound. He would do studies of people eating, look for correlations in the data, and present them in a popular way as settled science, where they were merely speculations with all the academic rigour of a wet noodle.

I wonder about the effect of pathogens in the blood stream and/or serious infections on a MI as in my own case when I had a serious flue a month before being “hit”.

It seems here to be a very strong relation to MI but what is the mechanism? Is it that the glykokalyx first must have been injured (e.g. by very high BS) before any pathogens may act on the endothelium? According to Ravnskov and mentioned in the paper the great thing with a high level of lipoproteins (LDL/HDL) is that they aggregate with the pathogens and then attract the macrophages or have I misunderstood this?

What is poor immune defense?

And what is “recovery” after a serious infection?

The more I learn about this the more confused I get (as with everything else in medicine).

Göran, could it be you had conditions that made at the time that you had MI, but not caused, or made more likely by the flu? It could be an association that the flu turned up shortly before rather than it contributing a causal factor. I say this because of Stephanie Seneff’s suggestion that we are more likely to get flu if we have a blood sulphate deficiency (sulfate if you are from the US), and the flu is allowed in to release sulphates from the muscles to correct the deficiency in the blood.

My daughter had a bad chest infection last winter, starting after long haul flight, it came back again and again. She is generally hale and hearty. Lots of chicken soup and such later I gave her cell salt Nat Sulph, she sweated profusely for several hours and then improved so much.
Anecdote of course, from what I understand it controls density of intercellular fluids and so removes toxins from body fluids. It seems to be natures diuretic perhaps.
I think I will struggle to understand your paper Dr Kendrick, so will just visit the blog and enjoy.
Thank you

Pathogenic bacteria use the bloodstream as a highway for getting around the body, and thus have to find ways to enter and exit through the endothelium. Many bacteria approach this problem by producing toxins that can breach the endothelial barrier through diverse creative mechanisms, including directly killing endothelial cells (ECs), weakening the cytoskeleton within ECs, and breaking the junctions between ECs. Toxins can also modulate the immune response by influencing endothelial biology, and can modulate endothelial function by influencing the response of leukocytes. Understanding these interactions, in both the in vitro and in vivo contexts, is of critical importance for designing new therapies for sepsis and other severe bacterial diseases.

It seems that these pathogens target the endothelium of “microvasculature”.
This wouldn’t have anything to do with plaques in larger arteries . . .
unless you consider the vasa vasora supplying those arteries.
How do you view that scenario?

It fits well with what I learnt from my study of the Molecular Biology of the CELL – Still, the complexity involved is as always almost overwhelming. It seems also like the glycocalyx is still a “dark horse” to me.

We are now indeed participating at one of the greatest blogs of my CVD-eyes!

Increased “knowledge” is so “relaxing” for a researcher as me – it feels like if a “scientific future” of mankind is “possible”. We CVD-victims certainly need hope!

“The cholesterol-lowering trials have only been successful by using apheresis, a technique that also removes many coagulation factors, or in an animal experiment by using probucol, which has anticoagulant eﬀects as well.”

I guess that is why my first “reasonable” cardiologist, 1999, admitted that the garlic/onions I used as an alternative to the aspirin prescribed was OK due to its documented anti-clogging ability. (All cardiologists are BTW not “evil”!)

I think, now sipping on my strong vitamin-C drink in this early morning, we “sceptics” must constantly honor Weston Price and Linus Pauling in their scientifically based “alternative” approach to medicine. (“Let the food/vitamins be your medicine!” – What is really new under the sun you may then ask!)

The silence/ quack accusation stamp they have encountered must accordingly be considered to be a very strong marker of honor. (A very good point Malcolm is now stressing about Uffe Ravnskov who received the ultimate honor of having his book burned in public in the most honored (?) media of today. – Reminds me of how Galileo was “honored” by the ban of the Church at his time.) This makes me also ponder about the idea and the mechanisms of a possible scientific “paradigm shift” today; the idea of which was introduced by the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, fifty years ago.

Goran, you oftern mention Vitamin C as an important supplement which has helped you survive CVD. Today I saw this article from Life Extension when 957 people were followed for 16 years and the death rate correlated with the vitamin C level in their blood.. An interesting article !

Linus Pauling was the first “true apostel” of vitamin C and earned his “quack” much to this fact. Susan Humpries is a later and almost equally brilliant advocate for vitamin C.

I though wonder about the official line of “vitamin C deniers”. In front of the staggering higher survival rates of sepsis victims given IV vitamin C, how can the deny its effect on the pathogens?

Perhaps some intelligent “denier” (I am sure we have a number around on this blog watching) could explain this to me. And I guess that their arguments must have sharpened since they abused the medical “science” at the Mayo hospital in order to be able to start the witch hunt on Pauling about forty years ago.

There must certainly be any Leon who can advocate their case today but perhaps we shouldn’t invite this kind of guys to this blog due to their demonstrated rhetoric Big Pharma skills – we want to see facts!

There may well e Goran but I would not encourage them..It would waste too much time and energy on the blog..

As for me..I discovered Linus Pauling’s book on Vitamin C in 1970. And I still have it. I don’t as a rule take lots of Vitamin C every day. I just have a container of 150 by 1 gram tablets on the shelf. Any day I feel poorly I take about 15 grams over the course of the day for as long necessary. That has been my own protocol for about 20 years and before that I tool slightly less as the 1 gram tablets were not available..

The other day my lady brought home a bug from the aged care home where she works..Not good for either of us ! But I was good after a couple of days with just Vitamin C & Zinc

This is very much a debatable statement. You’d think if the results were so clear-cut it would be easy to prove. Yet it doesn’t seem to be.

“A shortcut review was carried out to establish whether the use of intravenous vitamin C can reduce mortality or morbidity in patients diagnosed in the early phases of severe sepsis. Three directly relevant papers were found using the reported search strategy. … It is concluded that there is insufficient high-quality research to justify the routine use of vitamin C in severe sepsis. Further multicentre, double-blinded randomised controlled trials are required in order to establish the role of vitamin C in sepsis.” — Bet 2: Does intravenous vitamin C improve mortality in patients with severe sepsis?

There are two studies currently that might settle the matter. Dr Paul Marik claims great success in controlling sepsis with a cocktail of intravenous vitamin C, vitamin B1 (thiamine) and corticosteroids. It will be tested in the VICTAS study. And there’s another large study undertaken by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Both privately funded (because of course they won’t get industry funds). The report concludes:

Insufficient high quality evidence is a statement that means nothing. You can decide what you believe to be high quality evidence, then ignore anything else. It is a common technique used to cherry pick data for the dreaded meta-analysis. Find the answer you want, then reject any study that doesn’t support it – for one bogus reason or another. When antibiotics were introduced there was no evidence of any sort whatsoever that they would work, guess what, they did. The only organisations large enough to test vitamin C in a large scale randomised controlled trial are pharmaceutical companies, maybe the MRC or NIH in the US. Let us guess how many are lining up to prove that vitamin C works?

Indeed, governments no longer work in the public interest, if they ever did, but in the interests of industry. Because of the circumstances of my life, I have looked at these issues through the lens of vaccine injury and autism, but much of medicine suffers from the same set of problems. In the U.S., nearly all non-industry research spending is controlled by the National Institutes of Health, who, being the government, work for industry. A great deal of money it is, but an analysis of grants in autism research shows the bulk of it has gone into the blind alley of genetics. Some very good, independently-funded research has been done over the past 10-15 years in the U.S., the U.K., France, and the PRC concerning the bio-persistance (for decades) of aluminum, the mechanism by which it is carried to the tissues, and of its role in a chronic active neuroinflammatory process characteristic of the brain in autism, but this research gets no press because the press works for industry as well, thus the general public knows nothing of it. And autism remains in the DSM, the dullest work of fiction ever produced. It is perfectly clear that autism is biological, not psychiatric. I recently read an article claiming it takes an average of 17 years for new findings in medicine to make their way into clinical practice. Being an average, some findings will take much longer. I don’t think we can wait.

Sasha: The NIH has no interest in actual research. They just make certain to spend their entire budget each year, lest they get it cut the next. One of the things that pleased me early on was Trump cutting the CDC budget 15%! Mainly funds for foreign “health” initiatives.

Interesting comment you are making about the effect of vitamin C on sepsis being disputable.

A while ago someone brought this issue up on this blog and as far as I remember now on top of my there were very convincing numbers presented. Perhaps you, or someone else here on the blog, remember better than me what was actually brought up and which so impressed on me.

I still find Suzanne Humphries lecture very convincing regarding the antibacterial action of this vitamin. She seems also to be rather well read on the subject.

And BTW it is in my eyes very reasonable to believe that Big Pharma is as resistant as ever to the use of vitamin C as a pharmacological substans and probably like to sponsor “research” showing that it is “nonsense” by deliberate abuse of sound scientific protocols.

I have still in fresh memory what Linus Pauling wrote about how they “duplicated” his own research with IV C on terminal cancer by using much lower concentrations than Pauling had used himself and were then able to show “no effect” which then was turned into a “scientific” medical fact and Linus Pauling into a quack.

For me medical research i certainly something that today is totally corrupted by “Big Money” and where vitamins has no role. That is also why I keep away from all NHS and instead listen to the “orthomolecular” approach.

Goran,
Dr Kendrick mentions antibiotics which were quickly adopted without big trials. That is because they were dramatically effective. You didn’t need a big trial. An n=1 trial made you a believer. And of course it was wartime so an antibiotic like penicillin was desperately needed and rushed into service. In those days hospitals had sepsis wards where patients had their wounds cleaned and lay there hoping they wouldn’t get gangrene. There was no other effective medical treatment.

Well, guess what, it’s still wartime today, and troops are still getting nasty wounds which I’m sure are in big danger of going septic. It seems to me if vitamin C were so effective, a company that manufactures IV bags could produce a “sepsis pack” loaded with vitamin C and sell it to the military. Bulk vitamin C is about $10 per kg, i.e. 1 US cent per gram, so you could load a pack with 50 g of vitamin C and sell it for a dollar more and make a nice profit. If vitamin C were so effective it should soon be apparent, and you could mould public opinion to demand it, even if Big Pharma objects.

But from what I’ve read, in trials vitamin C has only modest benefits, not the dramatic effects of the early antibiotics, and of course it has to fight against established protocols, not enter an empty field with no competitors like penicillin did.

I’ve searched for military uses of vitamin C. Apart from the usual colds and flu prophylaxis, and experiments with burn victims, I found nothing.

It’s not that I’m against vitamin C. I eat a couple of oranges every day during winter and it keeps the sniffles away. But I am against exaggerated claims for any particular therapy, which is what the vitamin C fans appear to be making.

I doubt a couple of oranges would have much effect in countering an ilness. These “exaggerated claims”, which claims are those exactly? There are several, albeit small scale, studies. Which showed a significant measurable effect. Several are described in detail, with references, by Suzanne Humphries. Are you saying they are no more than “exaggerated claims”?

There is one situation where vitamin C does have a dramatic effect in healing sepsis, and that is where the patient is deficient in vitamin C to start with. But patients with normal vitamin C don’t seem to show dramatic results from the added vitamin C.

“One great problem in the interpretation of vitamin C trials arises from the fundamental difference between vitamin C and ordinary drugs such as antibiotics. In a trial of an ordinary drug, the control group is not given the drug, which simplifies the interpretation of the findings. In contrast, it is impossible to select control subjects who have zero vitamin C intake and no vitamin C in their system. Thus, all vitamin C trials de facto compare two different vitamin C levels. The lower dose is obtained from the diet, and it has varied considerably among the controlled studies. In addition, the vitamin C supplement doses given to the vitamin C groups have also varied extensively. Finally, the placebo group in some trials was also given extra vitamin C, which further confuses the comparisons. Therefore, the comparison of different vitamin C studies and the generalization of their findings is complicated.”

The paper also mentions there was a flood of interest in vitamin C after the publication of Pauling’s book, but in 1975 three papers appeared which debunked vitamin C, after which interest in it died away.

Ah,
If you look on Suzanne Humphries’ website http://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-oral-intravenous-vitamin-c/ she cites only one study of IV vitamin C alone with a grand total of 24 patients, including controls. It was designed to demonstrate the safety of IV vitamin C, which it seemed to do, and the SOFA scores [Sequential Organ Failure Assessment] of those receiving vitamin C were better than the controls. But all started with low levels of vitamin C, around 20 where normal is 50 – 70 μM. I did mention that added vitamin C was clearly beneficial when patients had below-normal levels.

The other study was of vitamin C with other stuff. It is not possible to know if vitamin C alone was beneficial, and anyway it was also a small safety study with 47 patients.

In addition, Dr Humphries cites many anecdotal cases where vitamin C has been beneficial, but as they say, the plural of anecdote is not data. No doubt the cases have been cherry-picked to support her point of view. If you got to any other specific therapy advocate — homeopath, chiropractor, dietician — you will also find scores of positive anecdotes. Not that I’m saying that she isn’t a genuine scientist, but the quality of the evidence is not overwhelming.

You could also look at Tom Levy, Robert Cathcart, and others. While. It is the case anecdotes don’t equal data, it is often all we have to support treatments, and pharmaceutical companies are always dressing up worse instances of “results” to claim justification for their toxins.

I had the early signs of a cold day before yesterday, so I took 25 to 30 grams of ascorbic acid, same today, and the symptoms have not progressed as normal. The rest of the family are going down with colds. But then it’s only an anecdote.

Well, supplements certainly belong to controversial issues, and I have turned into a strong “believer” with Big Pharma at the opposite end.

I usually find the information from the orthomolecular organisation (Linus Pauling’s creation) valuable.

E.g., there I learnt about the efficacy of high doses of natural vitamin E to basically eliminate my unstable angina – has worked fine for myself for a couple of years now. (N=1? but the Shute institute in Canada claimed to have successfully treated 50 000 CVD patients before being forced to close down their institute. That claim was a good starting point for myself to try this vitamin out. There are though dire warnings against the use of vitamin E from our authorities which in extreme cases may be warranted. So – do your homework first!

If something works for yourself you easily turns into a “believer” 🙂

And there are certainly references to advocate the use for those seriously interested in supplements.

Gary, unfortunately they have made the figures look good by using relative risk, not absolute. I don’t think there is any doubt that high levels of vitamin C are beneficial, especially when using the daily recommended dose as a reference, unless you are a pharmaceutical company which is busy trying to convince people vitamin C is toxic. I wonder how it would look if the figures were absolute.

AhNotepad. I did not know that. If they are using RR, the AR numbers may be small. Small, however, is better than zero. We know the essential role ascorbate plays in the inflammatory response and the healing process.

Gary, because of the large benefits, (25%+) I admit I asssumed the figures must be RR, as otherwise it would amount to earth shattering benefits. If the AR figures are tiny, then Doctoring Data has the explanations, and although still positive, the figures may be so small as to be not much more than a ststistical anomaly.

I bought some vitamin C pills in a local shop. They were horse pills, I can’t remember the actual numbers but it was something like 1g vitamin C pelleted with 5g glucose. That would be a very good way to make it not work I suspect.

Gary & A H Notepad..I thought to do so and went to the original source study with that in mind..Nut my non numeric mind got completely confused..So I ducked the task and am waiting for a someone here to take it on..
Also i must confess to enjoying the garden in the mildly warm springs days …Planted two fruit trees yesterday..A plum and a nectarine…It’s almost too late but I got them on Tuesday night at a Rare Fruits society meeting in Adelaide.

Also weeding the growing garlic is a quiet meditative task…Good for the heart !

Bill in Oz: I will do so as soon as I find the study again; not an easy task. From childhood I’ve always loved and understood numbers and number theory, geometry, ratios, and so forth. Your garlic must be fairly close to harvest. I always start in mid-spring, and am finished by late spring. I grow 12 varieties, and each has its own notion of when it is ready. By the way, we met a totally cool couple from down under on the trail this week. He said 90% of the population of Australia live within 100 km of the coast between Brisbane and Melbourne. He also told us about a couple of Australian Darwin Award winners, since we were in the woods and got to talking about wildlife.

Bill in Oz: Without buying the paper, it is not possible to tell whether they mean AR or RR, but I suspect it is RR. There were 948 people, aged 53-84, followed 16.4 years, so they would be 69-100 at the end. 58% of them died, which would be expected of this age group. What is striking to me is percent of stroke deaths: 31%, just slightly lower than CVD, at 32%. Cancer was 26%, and other causes 12%. A higher rate of stroke death in this region of China, and a lower rate of cancer death than we have in the West, if my memory serves me. If I remember Denise Minger’s analysis of the China Study data correctly, cancer , particularly liver cancer, is higher in coastal areas due to the higher humidity, resulting in a higher mycotoxin burden from improperly stored food.

Those of your followers who have FH will be cheered to know that our life span is about the same as for others without the condition.
Nonetheless, should be approach our GP and ask that he carries out tests to see if we have raised factor V111 and fibrinogen levels?
And if the tests prove positive, what advice would you give us? Apart from life style choices, which drugs or supplements can we rely upon?

I don’t think someone who is a member of a group that has, as a whole, a normal life span should be encouraged to seek any special tests! Even just waiting for test results, is stressful. I have come to the conclusion that as we get older we are already subjected to far too many tests.

Aside from the LDL, CVD and statin battleground it seems to me another battlefront is forming over the relationship between Alzheimer’s Disease and high LDL. I am wondering if the statin mantra might shift away, at least in part, from thou shalt take a statin to protect against heart disease, to thou shalt take a statin to protect yourself from Alzheimer’s Disease.

It’s a question of Luck!
I tried over and over to open the article since this post was posted.
Now suddenly I made it! There was a link on the top saying “download PDF” and it worked.
After 2 or 3 minutes I tried it again and the link wasn’t there any more! In its place was “Check Access”

Without getting bogged down in the criminality of industrial food manufacture and the deliberate (and successful) aim of turning the majority of developed populations into sugar/carb/fast food/ready meal addicts – an article in today’s newspaper raises a question in my mind.

The article is about the NHS paying too much for insulin (up to five times too much); referencing the publishing of research in the online journal BMJ Global Health, the researchers calculated the actual production costs of insulin and allowed for some profit, but found that drug companies are charging massively more than this – and the NHS pay it. A year’s supply of insulin for a Type 1 diabetic should cost £75 per year ($100) but the NHS is paying £399 ($532) and in the US $1,251 (£938) per person.

My question is: an organisation as mammoth as the NHS should have phenomenal bargaining power when it comes to ‘bulk buying’ – as do the supermarkets, yet they appear to pay whatever their suppliers demand. Is this a case of nobody cares as it’s not their money? The NHS seems to me to be so revered that it is forbidden to even mention that is horrendously inefficient and doesn’t appear to apply even rudimentary financial discipline in its transactions. For many years now, the cry of “we’re short of funding” sees the government throw £billions into the abyss, and then the cycle continues – pass this money (UK workers’ hard earned taxes) to the drug companies until the cry of “we’re short of funding” is heard again.

Anyone within the NHS with basic numerical/business skills ought to be able to challenge the ludicrous charges made by suppliers and using the purchasing power of such an enormous entity, drive a harder bargain.

Throwing extra money at the NHS is akin to pumping more and more water into a leaking garden pond. Fix the leaks first !!!!

Sci-reader: thank you for the links, I will read them.
Gary: yes, I agree with you completely regarding pharma’s vast influence. I also think that pharma not only invests heavily into politicians, research centers, and regulators but it also funds films and TV shows. For examples, I would cite movies like “Contagion” and “Side Effects” and TV show “Dr House”. There could be more examples that I don’t know about.

You might be right about the big corporates are acting worse in the US than here in Europe but I am not sure about that any longer, almost thirty years later than when I was involved myself hands on in the US.

When I was then living in the US for a year, working at GE, I certainly noticed that everyone among my colleagues was 100% aware of the hypocrisy that the management represented. At one time there was a note out and put up on the billboards which told about the necessity to ‘instill trust” (as a Swede I had to ask what this wording actually ment) since it was strongly obvious for management that there was a very large gap between what we experienced on the floor and what was “advocated” from the top and in order to close this gap among us engineers in the materials development department it was considered “essential” to do something about this fact for the actual survival of GE long term.

In my own field of expertise, about the endurance of of the superalloys used in the aircraft engines, I notices personally that business considerations came wide steps before the experimental facts I was myself familiar with and I actually went (rather “lured”) into action on this issue pointing to “the must instill trust” post. Then at 1990 I was met with great laughters (and “good luck”) from my colleagues who were certainly less naive than myself at that time. However there was an extremely experienced head engineer who encouraged me to go ahead. He said: “To sweep something under the rug always hit back in the long run to my experience!” and I wrote the best report of my life but which was never issued for evident reasons.

Well, to me it is obvious that we are today living in a world even more corrupted by “Big Business” ethics and that there are no indications of any reversed trends but for the rhetorics.

I guess all corruption has an ultimate limit but being familiar with the “statin issue” for ten years now I am also hesitant about any changes in the near future in the medical field to say the least.

Makes me think o Jeremiah!

And you find the same “moral” concern as mine by reading the works of Plato.

I think of things as the freedom of the wolf, or the freedom of the sheep. Big business are the wolves, the general public are the sheep. I don’t blame wolves for wanting to eat sheep – it is what they do. I don’t blame sheep for not wanting to be eaten – but wolves need to eat, and if they can’t they will die.

There is a balance point somewhere between the two freedoms. In my opinion the wolves are running too free at present. We live in Wolfworld, and the wolves want to keep it like that. We need the shepherds to get off their backsides and provide more protection. Currently, they have been seduced (bought and paid for) by the wolves. Who will stand up for the sheep? The voices are very quiet at present. In the UK we have Jeremy Corbyn. He would kill all the wolves. Then we would all live in Sheepworld. The problem with Sheepworld is that the sheep eventually eat everything, and then we all starve to death. Sheep, wolves, cows, horses – the lot. Or else, the leaders of the sheep world grow teeth, and gradually turn into wolves.

Dr. Kendrick: Good analysis. There are ways of organizing the economy where there is free enterprise like today, but many benefit, rather only those at the top of the food chain. I’ve read about them. They’ll never happen. The Left and Right would never find agreement in how to implement sensible policies. We’ll continue bumbling on with boom and bust, occasional wars, and mass poisoning of the world’s population and ecosystems with pharmaceuticals and agro-industrial chemicals, not to mention nuclear weapons. The best we can do is have fun every chance we get while slogging through this mess, and educate, educate, educate (and I don’t mean in schools, where it rarely happens!).

Martin T: In the U.S. there was a move to allow Medicare (a huge buyer) to negotiate drug prices. The Republicans (akin to U.K. Conservative) shot it down. Don’t worry, though, the Democrats (akin to U.K. Labour) are just as weasely and conniving. Obamacare was a vast gift to industry.

I think Obamacare had good and bad, as do all laws. One thing they tried to do was tax medical devices, though, which is not a gift to the industry. In fact, the Republicans hated this part and got it gutted.

I agree with you that both parties are bad, although right now, the Republicans are really, really, really, really bad. The HATED Trump, yet became fawning when they realized they were getting what they wanted. Remember “Lying Ted Cruz”, who now has the support of Trump? What the heck is that?

BobM: Politics is what it is. I actually heard part of the debate on the radio between Ted Cruz and his opponent, who has an Irish name I can’t recall. Great fun, with lots of hoots and hollers (this is Texas, remember). I don’t like the positions either one espouses. None of it means anything, and Texas is pretty firmly Republican now, anyway. The deep state is real, is scary, and is in charge.

A sad fact I have learned from this blog is that while the situation is much worse in the US, the same dirty games are being played on Europe. Also, I and others have thought that the problem here is the insurance industry driving up costs. But it seems that is too simple.

Truly, the pernicious and nefarious ones are always finding new ways around every attempt at containing them.

You said:
“I’m saying that it’s possible the things that cause “inflammation” can cause health issues, such as (high) Omega 6 fatty acids. In this case, the inflammation elicited by the body is because of an input to the body that is deleterious. Blindly saying “inflammation is good” in this context is, I believe, misguided.”

Of course inflammation is always a response to an injury. The injury is not good. But the inflammation is how the body heals. So inflammation is good like having an immune system is good. The inflammation is not good OR bad in and of itself. It is simply a process that indicates injury has occurred.

If you sprained your ankle and there were no inflammation response, it would mean a very basic function of your body was not working.

But if what you are doing is inundating your body with things that cause inflammation, then the causing of the inflammation is bad. How does that square with the simple statement “inflammation is good”? See the issue?

For a sprained ankle, inflammation is good. For foods that cause persistent inflammation, inflammation is bad, as it’s a marker of deleterious effects you’re producing. The body cannot overcome the harm you’re doing to it.

Hmm. No, if you eat foods that harm your body, and then your body works to try to heal it, that process is good. If that process were not happening, you would become quite sick fairly soon. I’d say a lot of people are walking a tightrope between injury and repair. It is because the repair is constantly ongoing that they are able to function at all. Sometimes they stay slightly ahead of the damage, sometimes they fall slightly behind. These are people with chronic health issues.

Is it good to walk around all inflamed all the time? Obviously not, but the inflammation is just the visible surface of the actual problem. Let’s say you bang your thumb with a hammer every 3 days. Let’s say it takes 4 days to heal. The best your body can do with its efforts is to almost heal it each time you bang it again. But if there were no healing process, probably you would just lose the thumb after a few bangs. And it would be silly of you to blame the inflammation and swelling (which is painful) as somehow bad when the issue is you keep banging your thumb with that hammer.

I think it is probably possible (?) for the body to get stuck in an over reaction mode, but I am not sure.

AnnaM: Not possibly. It happens many times every day. The whole purpose of vaccination is to activate the immune system. The antigen in many vaccines, whether a weakened virus or formaldehyde-killed bacterium, doesn’t provoke a sufficient activation (measured by antibody concentration) to satisfy the “experts,” so the antigen is adsorbed to a neurotoxic adjuvant, usually nano-sized particles of aluminum salts. Inflammation occurs at the injection site, in the serum, and in the tissues, including the brain, as macrophages carry these particles in the circulation and can deposit them in the tissues. This is the major cause of the encephalopathy which results in regression to autism, most commonly prior to age three. For some this immune activation event happens in utero, either from an infection in the mother or provoked by vaccination of the mother. In autism, the immune activation (inflammation) in the brain never shuts off.

@Chris..DO NOT eat those viatmin C tablets with 5 grams of sugar…They will do far more damage than benefit..I buy Vitamin C from a local Oz company named Faulding..One grams tablets with NO sugar..But they are stocked in the local chemists (=Pharamcies) Maybe they do web sales ?

Oh yes I normally buy online and they are generally good quality, so I was surprised and disappointed by the ones from the local “health food shop”. Should have read the small print . . .the comment above about just eating a sugar cube reminded me of a childhood treat – cutting a square hole in the top of an orange, inserting a sugar cube and sucking out the juice through the cube. Then I used to drink orange juice or preferably mandarin juice, “no added sugar” but loads of non-added sugar. I’m much better now . . .

Always worth checking the “inactive ingredients” in pills. Someone I knew was switched from a brand name to a generic and became ill. The generic was pressed with lactose and he was severely lactose intolerant.

Regarding Vit C: if I am not mistaken, majority of Vit C supplements use synthetic form versus more expensive ones that source from things like acerola cherries, for example. Is it possible that synthetic version is less effective?

Goran: according to an engineer I spoke to recently, things are even worse now in manufacturing. There’s “planned obsolescence” – products are designed to fail after a certain time because it’s good for business. I knew a mechanic who owned an AMC Jeep from 1960’s, the original Jeep Cherokee. He said AMC made cars so reliable they would rarely break. Eventually AMC went out of business, the product they made was too sturdy.

Sasha: And this is maddening indeed. Two years ago I bought new overhead lighting for our kitchen. Two beautiful fixtures I purchased specifically because they use incandescent bulbs, which are guaranteed for one year. Like clockwork, they burn out after three months. I no longer put the lenses on, because they are heavy, and I don’t much like ladders any more. I would gladly pay a pretty penny for bulbs which have a long life, but they are simply unavailable, as far as I know.

Gary: yes, it extends across multiple fields, it seems. I have now heard the same story from at least four sources: an electrical engineer, car mechanic, freezer salesperson, and garage door repairman.

Hi, Gary. Not sure what you’re calling a luxury light bulb. I just googled “luxury light bulbs” (without the quotation marks). I wish I could post a screen shot of what came back, but one of the hits is “Luxury Light Bulbs at Perigold | Masterfully Made, Uniquely You‎”.

I’m not claiming “conspiratorial planned obsolescence” doesn’t exist. I’m just saying it’s always easier to ascribe to conspiracy what may be incompetence or something else. Things aren’t always that simple. Manufacturers might make high-quality long-lasting light if there were a profitable market for them. I think light bulbs are a commodity for most people, and consumers generally look for something inexpensive. So, that’s where the market is.

LA_Bob: Upon further reflection, it dawned upon me that surely the military uses high-quality, long-lasting incandescent bulbs for some applications. Not as certain as death and taxes, but close. So there is a market, and likely not a small one, since the military blows through piles of money every nanosecond. Question remains, from whom do they purchase them? And does one need a top security clearance to do so?

Yes there was a time when Ford Europe cars and Transits had a design life of 50 000 miles, D Series trucks 100 000 and the big Transcontinental a quarter million. Yet at the same time VW and Volvo cars would routinely exceed 100 000 and many trucks including British ones would do half a million or more with only routine maintenance.

This has now changed, many cars will last a lot longer than they did, I had a loan car which was a little Renault Clio that had done over 300 000 and was only just starting to fade. Longevity has now become a feature again – the first family car we had lasted from 1937 to 1957 albeit I believe laid up during the war. Some subsequent ones were falling apart after five years. I still saw my late mother’s Clio around fifteen years after she bought it, I haven’t seen it recently, I don’t know if the car died or its owner.

My kitchen has five spotlights which are very carefully made, I can guarantee that when one blows the others will fail very soon after. Elsewhere I’ve had “long life” bulbs that blew quickly and one old incandescent bulb still going after at least fifteen years, so they don’t always get it right.

Dowdeswell ploughs were a classic case of making things so good and long lasting that they put themselves out of business. Computer hard drives are the exact opposite, it’s totally pot luck how long they live. The sort of engineering I was involved in required regular replacement of wearing items, which is where all the profit came from. The rest of the machine would last decades.

@Gary, I think that most Australians live in the East Coast big cities..Melbourne, Woollongong, Sydney, Newcastle, Gold Coast, Brisbane with lots of the rest living in smaller towns & cities also along the East coast…

I think I planted 7 varieties of garlic last Autumn bt none of themare anywhere nar ready now..Here where I am in the Adelaide Hills the traditional time to dig garlic is late November to Mid December…Each day more trees are leafing out; figs and apples are doing it now..But most stone fruit flowered a month ago… I still have citrus trees in pots to plant : a lemon and a Japanese Satsuma seedless Mandarin..It will join the 7 other citrus growing here…

And yes if you do the numbers on that study that would be marvelous..Definitely not my strong suite ! 😦

Bill in Oz: That would be the same timing as me. Mid December for you would be late Spring, and my harvest is finished about mid June, which is late Spring here. Now is the time yours are bulbing up, so keep them happy!

…1st off, it’s my essential supplement. Having survived a CVD incident, and trying to find out what happened, possible vit C deficiency as a contributory factor was a contender. Having read Pauling/Rath, Dr Suzanne Humphries and many more, more vit C in diet and also supplementation was adopted.

Both to stop any arterial damage and also to aid repairs.

I have no idea if it has but my lp(a) levels came down. As I have said b4, without giving up vit C it is not possible to confirm this was down to vit C.

Another calcium scan might shed some light on the matter.

Now, what hasn’t happened is:

(1) I’ve got a bad cold as I type. Vit C didn’t stop me picking up this bug and it certainly hasn’t shifted it, despite mixing up larger spoonfuls. Very disappointing that it can’t deal with a relatively minor, every day health issue.

(2) A lot has been said about how beneficial vit C is for the skin. It has had no impact on my chronic (decades in fact) dermatitis.

(3) Some commenter here in recent years had success with vit C and dealing with either (I can’t remember which) stress, anxiety or depression. Vit C has had no impact on my bouts of either of these 3.

My conclusion is that it is not a cure-all wonder substance but it won’t stop me from getting plenty, primarily from a CVD reason.

It was a while since I read Linus Paulings books about this issue. Still what lingers in my mind is the “knowledge” from someone who understands the most basic aspects (appeals very much to my own mind). But then there are the “clinical” aspects where opinions evidently differ substantially.

What could I say – I am a “believer” in vitamin C and it seems to work for me. As I mentioned earlier, when I a few days ago felt my throat “being attacked” I introduced very high levels of vitamin C and my “problem” dissolved but N=1 doesn’t prove anything!

(I am dismissed by: “Good that it works for you!”) Or am I misled? Is it that I have been avoiding vegetable PUFA’s or carbs? which keeps my immune system on top and myself “healthy” or is it my “work outs” in the garden?

Goran – vitC? Yes, I’m a believer too. I don’t take such a big dose as you do but I do 3 grams a day. I haven’t had a cold/sore throat for years. But as you do, I avoid the filthy oils, almost all carb and do a LOT of exercise, usually around 17000 vigorous steps per day plus tennis, gardening and housework. Kneading bread (for husband) really gets you going.
Goran, I love your contributions to this blog. You’re always a gentleman and always have interesting things to say.
Thank you
JanB

Talking “kneading bread” I was actually making sour dough rye bread (Russian style) with my own hands for some years. But when my wife turned severely diabetic ten years ago and which was the main reason for letting all carbs “go” and this switch also including my own rye bread – a sad fact but which though had a dramatic improvement effect on her health.

Our experience tells us that as long as we keep away from ALL carbs she is fine without any medications and is fit for fight at the age of 71. BTW she lost 16 kg and myself 20 on our LCHF regimen. The same experience as Dr. Fettke and Prof. Noakes? N=3 + all followers.

Thank you for your comment. It is always wise to remember that nothing in this world behaves exactly the same in every person.

We have been trained to believe that if something does not succeed in one person – or even a minority of people – then you should ignore it as “unproven” in value. I disagree. If something is helpful for even 30 percent of the people who try it, I think it worth trying. And if I were told I had an incurable condition, I probably would try just about anything – provided it was not painful or debilitating and I could afford it.

Charles, I have no personal experience of the efficacy of Vitamin C in relation to the maladies that you mention people have claimed it can benefit. I can, however, provide a ringing endorsement of the role Vitamin C can play in maintaining the health of our gums.

For around 10 years I suffered from periodic episodes of gum inflammation; around four times a year, which could take up to a month to resolve.

About three years ago, I read that Vitamin C was very effective in these cases, so I ordered Sodium Ascorbate online.

As luck would have it, the Ascorbate arrived the day after I experienced another outbreak. I dosed myself with around 25 grams during the day, and when I woke the next morning, all symptoms had disappeared.

I have taken a daily dose of around 8 grams, dissolved in water and, for the past three years, I have not experienced another episode of gum inflammation.

I have, however, caught colds during the past three years, and upping the dose of Vitamin C does not seem to do much good. I have read that an increased dose can shorten the duration of a cold, but it certainly does not stop it stone dead, the way that it kills off gum inflammation.

I really only take Vitamin C for the health of my gums. Any benefits for preventing CVD are just a bonus for me.

Thanks to all for the discussion following my post on the NHS paying any price demanded by suppliers.
However, regardless of the role of Pharma’ and the Government, etc.. how is it possible for the finance department in a hospital or healthcare trust to simply pay whatever is asked?
If you, or I took our car to a garage for repair and the mechanic quoted something ridiculous like £200 ($267) for four spark plugs (normal price £12.50) – then you would refuse to pay !
Similarly if you went into a supermarket for a pint of milk and found that instead of the usual 50 pence, it was marked up as £45 – again you wouldn’t pay such a nonsensical sum.
There was a newspaper article a couple of months back here in the UK where one hospital had paid something like £8 for a tube of toothpaste which they were selling in their own on site shop for £1 – no other business would survive such profligacy, the wanton wasting of funds that could make a real difference would see the perpetrator rapidly dismissed.
Yet – nothing changes – why aren’t those responsible held to account? It is OUR money that is being thrown away recklessly. But it’s OK isn’t it ? There’s plenty more of the tax pile to draw from – you’d pay the £200 for those spark plugs if it wasn’t your money you were using.
Where on earth is the accountability ?!!!!

Payment systems in the NHS are complex. If you launch a new product you can charge what you like for it, and that is the price. The NHS will either pay, or it won’t. Actually NICE was designed to look at whether or not a product produced enough benefit to justify paying for it. Usually measured in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). If the QALY is above ~ £30K/year NICE will approve. [That, at least, is the theory]. Insulin is complex with regard to payment, there are hundreds of possible formulations – long acting, medium long acting, short acting, human analog, different types of delivery devices. Each device can be patented, each extended release type can be patented. I have completely lost track of them all. The prices change, up and down, and around. No individual doctor has the faintest idea which costs what – or why. In this world, the companies move very fast, the NHS bureaucracy moves very slowly – at least six steps behind. It could be sorted out, but it would require iron will and a desire by the politicians to legislate. In the world of Brexit no-one has time to think about anything else.

Indeed, such is the way with bureaucracy. The index finger has no idea what the thumb is doing or why. Patent law plays a role, too. About fifteen years ago, under “I’m the decider” Dubya, patents were extended in years, in some cases, to ridiculous lengths. In the U.S. the most infamous example is the Pentagon, whom Trump gave $1 trillion this year, to back-slaps all around.

My late father was a buyer in the NHS – not for drugs though, for all other hospital supplies. He retired in the seventies which was when things were starting to go pear shaped. I don’t think they would have got away with £8 toothpaste in those days. Just a guess..If I’d let that sort of thing go through in industry I’d have been fired.

My GP told me that they don’t like prescribing 5mg carbimazole because the price is the same as for 20mg. I gather this is not uncommon for many drugs. “Pill splitting” has become common in the US for that reason, maybe why so many manufacturers now make “extended release” pills which can’t be split.

We had our Dr. Annika Dahlqvist who was cleared of identical charges about LCHF as those experienced by Dr. Fettke and Prof. Tim Noakes. That happened in 2008 and after three years of investigation by the Swedish authorities..

More than an apology is needed I think. A very fat cheque to compensate the Fettkes for all the stress and financial loss they have suffered, is an absolute must…I wonder if they will take this matter to the Australian Federal Court ?

A question on biochemistry: A person following an LCHF or ketogenic diet switches from glucose burning metabolism to fat burning metabolism. Triglycerides are then broken down into fatty acids and glycerol backbone. Fatty acids are converted into ketones, if I understand correctly. What happens to glycerol?

If you have time to answer another biochem question… When we eat fats as part of our diet (fats that come with meat cuts, fats in fish, lardo and salo that Italians and Russians eat, etc), these fats are they composed of unbound fatty acids or are those fats partially in the form of triglycerides?

It is a constant claim by our adversaries the “the brain needs carbs” and in fact this is also true. But it is just about 25 % of the energy that must come form the carbs, the rest might be the ketons which are abundantly available from the converted fats and delivered from the liver if you turn into a ketogenic state by avoiding all carbs.

Ketons are superfuel for the brain and the rest of your body!

BTW the ketogenic state is well documented to be very beneficial for several different pathological states in our bodies. However it is very difficult to abstain from the ubiquitous carbs 🙂

I think the claim is that brain needs glucose, not carbs necessarily. And if I understand it correctly, the brain does need glucose for fuel and can’t use ketones (you can correct me if I am wrong). We can produce glucose from proteins also.

However, my other question was: if we consume fats and they partially come in the form of triglycerides, wouldn’t it follow that once they are broken down by the body into fatty acids and glycerol, glycerol would then be converted into glucose?

I ask because I have heard it said that you can’t produce glucose from fats…

I would love to hear an answer on this from anyone who understands biochem better than me.

The problem you are running into is with the word fat, or fats. There is no such thing as a fat, or fats. There are fatty acids, which are usually stored as triglycerides. Three fatty acids attached to a glycerol molecule. This is often described as ‘fat.’ Sometime fatty tissue and/or adipocytes are referred to as fat. When people say you cannot produce glucose from fats. They mean that you cannot produce glucose from fatty acids. The place where glucose is tuned into fatty acids (mainly) is in the stomachs of herbivores. Carbohydrates are broken down in more simple sugars and the bacteria convert then to fatty acids. So, ironically, the diet of a sheep is ‘fat’. Yes, herbivores are fat eaters – fatty acid eaters. Ain’t nature funny.

It is the glucose which is the molecule used as the fuel in our metabolism and by our brain first hand. (Well, fructose is another sugar which takes another route through the liver and tend to end up as stored as fat deposits (always TG). This is why bears feast on berries in the autumn before hibernating.) Primarily the glucose molecules come from the “carbs” of the different kinds (usually starchy food but there are many different ones) we digest but which are extremely rapidly broken down by our digestive system in our guts to glucose molecules causing “blood sugar” spikes after a “carb rich” meal and even more interesting the insulin spikes in response. Fat and proteins are secondary sources when our stored starch is depleted as the first back up source upon turning into a ketogenic state by fasting or on a strict LCHF diet. Cellulose is also built of glucose molecules chains but they are heavily cross linked so we can’t digest it though herbivores can.

If you want to go deep into the subject of how our metabolic blood sugar regulation works my favorit reference on this subject is the prize lecture by Professor Roger Unger which I have actually already referred to a number of times on this blog but to my great surprise have had very little feed back on – I still don’t understand this lack of interest (?) in this extremely important health subject – not least to the arteriosclerosis issue.

Goran, I was wrong thinking that the brain can’t use ketones… According to Dominic D’Agoustino, it can and it does when on ketogenic diet. There’s an interesting interview with him on Peter Attia Drive podcast.

There is this interesting article: Omega-6 vegetable oils as a driver of coronary heart disease: the oxidised linoleic acid hypothesis. It both supports and negates the cholesterol theory. Maybe here is the answer to my earlier question, what changed in the last 100 or so years that heart disease is so prevalent these days.

Although LCHF might be seen as a dietary bias on this blog when relating to CVD I don’t think it really is since it strongly realtes to the actual “life style” underlying causes and especially when you are severely trapped in the metabolic syndrome LCHF can certainly be a remedy if not a proper cure.

In Sweden, being a pioneer country in this respect (the “Freeing” of dr. Annika Dahlqvist celebrated the ten years anniversary this year), we have a magazine, the ” LCHF-magazine”, with interesting articles for lay people.

In the latest issue I see an interesting summary of why people catch on.

1. They want to lose weight and are often successful in this mission if they can stay away from the ubiquitous carbs.
2. T2 diabetic which can actually be reversed without medication (or amputations) and kept that way if one can stay strict (a lesson certainly learned by my wife (N=1))
3. T1 Diabetics can also benefit by much better BS control and with reduced amounts of injected insulin.
4. People with “minor” ailments, psoriasis, IBS and/or food allergies often note improvements
5. People with a sugar addiction (and this is for real! and a tough one to treat) often jumps on in a desperate move to get away from their addiction but with various success
6. Endurance athletes who realize that they more easily can run marathons and like when they rely on stored fat instead of on the limited supply of carbs. – they don’t “hit the wall”
7. Ordinary healthy people who have been convinced of the benefits and want to live a healthier life and perhaps even longer

And there are different levels of adherence of course!

1. Liberal when you just try to reduce the amount of carbs in a relaxed way and especially the added sugar.
2. Moderat when you actively screen you food and your eating habits
3. Strict when you actually “chase” all carbs in the food and when you surely enter a constant ketogenic state (BTW this was the only way for the T1 diabetics to survive before the advent of the insulin a hundred years ago.)

It really doesn’t seem to be a limit to the deliberate “criminal” activities employed by Big Pharma and especially when they see their profits being threatened by “alternatives” as vitamins bringing “protective” health on population levels.

Here is some scrutinizing on the issue of vitamin D – scary reading of what deceptive actions they are capable of. The medical journals and media in general are corrupted by their vicious agenda and money.

My understanding is that studies on vitamins use the ranges established, many years ago, for the ‘normal’ ranges. With vitamin D, this was the range established to prevent rickets. Once you get the vitamin D level into the ‘normal’ range you then claim you have given enough vitamin D. Then you see no difference in CVD rates, and claim that vitamin D consumption has no benefit. This is what researchers did with vitamin C, to discredit Linus Pauling’s claims. No-one has said – give a really high dose, get the levels way up there, and see what happens.

It is a game pharma companies are used to playing with pharmaceuticals. Compare your drug against a sub-optimal dose of a competitor drug, given at the wrong time of day, to a group of patients unlikely to see benefit… then claim success.

I’m on 10,000 iu/day, which I believe is the maximum to be safe. Even so, now that the UK heatwave is over, I’m feeling the lack and occasionally double the dose. Severe Vit D deficiency showed up on a blood test in January, but GPs are not *allowed* to prescribe more than 1,000 iu and we’re more likely to be given 800 iu – which is barely a maintenance dose let alone enough to fix a deficiency. In fact my GP has told me she can’t add Vitamin D to my repeat prescription, even though she can write me a one-off script when needed (and I’m lucky that she is on my side in this regard!).

Those test results (not only my Vit D was screwy) propelled me into the research that led me to Dr Kendrick as well as a whole lot of other knowledge that I’d never have come across. In fact I’d never have had that blood test through the NHS despite being unable to work for the last 12 years with various mystery conditions… Really scary, now that I know better, to see how little everyone knows and how hard it is to find out.

I talk to everyone I know about this now, and people I know are mostly educated and intelligent (the two don’t always go together 😉 ), and also, in my own social circle, mostly interested in nutrition, health, used to questioning the line we’re fed by officialdom, etc etc. That’s the people I hang out with. But still it’s very hard to get anyone interested ENOUGH to see this stuff as worth thinking about. It’s a lot of study, it’s complicated, and it’s difficult to find easily-digested information. Only those of us with serious health problems have sufficient incentive. And within that category, most haven’t the capacity for serious research (let alone the academic experience to know how to set about it, and how to distinguish the wheat from the chaff).

I’ve heard it’s better in some countries, eg the Netherlands test vits/mineral levels as the first thing with a new patient (so I’m told). I wish I could think how to get the point across to “the masses” without being silenced by the politics. There must be a way if we put our heads together. It would change the nation’s direction, the economy, morale, everything.

FDA-approved artificial sweeteners and sport supplements were found to be toxic to digestive gut microbes, according to a new paper published in Molecules by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

The collaborative study indicated relative toxicity of six artificial sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame, and acesulfame potassium-k) and 10 sport supplements containing these artificial sweeteners. The bacteria found in the digestive system became toxic when exposed to concentrations of only one mg./ml. of the artificial sweeteners.

“We modified bioluminescent E. coli bacteria, which luminesce when they detect toxicants and act as a sensing model representative of the complex microbial system,” says Prof. Ariel Kushmaro, John A. Ungar Chair in Biotechnology in the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering, and member of the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev. “This is further evidence that consumption of artificial sweeteners adversely affects gut microbial activity which can cause a wide range of health issues.”

Artificial sweeteners are used in countless food products and soft drinks with reduced sugar content. Many people consume this added ingredient without their knowledge. Moreover, artificial sweeteners have been identified as emerging environmental pollutants, and can be found in drinking and surface water, and groundwater aquifers.

“The results of this study might help in understanding the relative toxicity of artificial sweeteners and the potential of negative effects on the gut microbial community as well as the environment.

Furthermore, the tested bioluminescent bacterial panel can potentially be used for detecting artificial sweeteners in the environment,” says Prof. Kushmaro.

Story Source:

Materials provided by American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Edward E. Bradford, S’truth, that doesn’t surprise me AT ALL. I have a condition called post nasal drip (for over two years now) and I found that chewing gum gave me a lot of relief (along with saline irrigation) I started off with the usual brand sweetened with aspartame but didn’t at first make the connection between that and my increasingly disturbed gut though eventually the penny dropped. Then I moved on the expensive gum sweetened with Xylitol and found much needed relief in both sinus and gut symptoms but then, after some months, my nasty gut problem reared it’s ugly head again (I seemed to spend my two days at Wimbledon this year in and out of the loo) and on my return I vowed never EVER to use any gum again. Since then, my poor gut problem has gradually resolved and is now more or less back to normal. By way of confirmation, a few weeks ago I had a gin and (inadvertent aspartame-sweetened) tonic. The dreaded ‘back door trot’ was back with a vengeance.
Now I suck on cherry stones to relieve my post nasal drip…which probably means a low level of cyanide poisoning or I’ll choke to death on the tennis court. C’est la vie.
Sorry, Dr. K. This is just about as far as possible from CVD but I just needed to have a little rant.

Jan B,
I loved your post relating to a nasal drip. I found it serious but hilarious at the same time. I also had trouble with a ‘runny nose’ some time ago and decided to read all the do’s and dont’s relating to my meds. I actually found that one of the tablets could cause this so stopped it for a few days and, sure enough, the nose was back to normal so I don’t take that tablet any more and cannot even remember the name of it.

Thank heaven for a little light relief just now and again. My apologies also, Dr. Kendrick.

Funny that, I had an appalling runny nose problem soon after starting to take bisoprolol. My GP refused to countenance the idea that the medication could possibly cause runny nose, even though I found reference to it on the known side effects. Gave up the medication and miraculously my nose dried up.

Well Frederick, I wish I had a runny nose. Then all I’d need is a hanky, I guess. What I have is copious amounts of goo streaming from my sinus cavities, too thick to swallow, hence the chewing gum/cherry stones, to stimulate saliva production. All quite disgusting really. Next week I have very expensive appointment with a homeopath. There’s desperation for you.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Sorry, Dr. K. I’m doing it again.

Well Frederica, I wish I had a runny nose. Then all I’d need is a hanky, I guess. What I have is copious amounts of goo streaming from my sinus cavities, too thick to swallow, hence the chewing gum/cherry stones, to stimulate saliva production. All quite disgusting really. Next week I have very expensive appointment with a homeopath. There’s desperation for you.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Sorry, Dr. K. I’m doing it again.

Jan B/Fredericka Huxley.
You ‘got it in one’ Frederica. I started with various problems after taking the beta blocker bisoprolol, and upon checking the list of side-effects one of them was definitely a runny nose! Thanks for jogging my memory.

Jan,
You might try sucking warm water up your nose and blowing it out, gently, so as not to explode anything important. Sounds disgusting if you’ve never done it, but I do it frequently after reading about the technique in a yoga book. The idea is to flush out any colonies of bacteria than might have taken up residence in your nose.

Martin – nah, been there, tried that but with the addition of salt and bicarb., on the advice of an ENT consultant. Water alone isn’t nice at all. Last week I forgot to include the salt/bicarb and I thought my head would explode. Hot, hot, hot sensation all the way up the sinus cavities to my forehead. At least I know now that the irrigation reaches the sinuses. This is a sinus problem not a nose problem. But thanks. The irrigation does give me relief for a short time so I always do it before choir sessions.
Oh dear, sorry again, Dr. K. I’ll go away now.

Back in 2006, when I had a stent placed, I discovered THINCS. I greatly appreciate the information I found there to use to defend myself from statin prescribing doctors and nonsense about saturated fat. I also read Uffe’s book and “The Great Cholesterol Con”. Thanks!

The COI is enlightening, even Ron Krauss appears to have been bought, plus at least one author is a vegan (conflict not listed)

My opinion – counting the number of firemen can give an estimate of the size of a fire but not its cause. Plus when the firemen are drunk (the LDLs are oxidised, glycated or otherwise damaged) they don’t work properly and more are required.

chris c,
Study is good news for cardiologists. Statins to reduce cholesterol will still be the preferred treatment. If you are a patient pay more attention to the sceptics as per reference 3 and 4. Who will sponsor the sceptics?

The study is amazing in that it appears so scientific, but the give away is the mention of the concensus view. Reminds me of Tim Noakes’ words “when you’ve got concensus you’ve trouble”. I suspect the people associated with writing the study really believe what they have written.

Today I love reading the serious fundamental, but also skeptical books, about medicine since many of my earlier medical illusions about “ailments” such as CVD, diabetes, mental disorders and cancers but not least about medical “advice” on nutrition have evaporated with increased insight. All this spells “corruption”!

The subject of vaccination is though a new field of interest to me but for sure a controversial one, an interest now being fueled by listening to Susan Humphries and Peter C. Gøtzsche’s critique. So I decided to do my proper “homework” also in this field and thus ordered Susan Humphries’ book “Dissolving Illusions – Disease, Vaccines and the Forgotten History” she wrote together with Roman Bystrianyk.

Having now read the introductory 70 pages part it is, as the titel of the book indicates, devastating also for my previous illusions in this specific area of medicine.

Here is just one quote about smallpox vaccination:

“In 2008, after more then 100 years of use, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) called for quarantine and destruction of all Dryax.”

The authors have obviously done good research into old files which reveals a lot of the hypocrisy of the vaccine pictures the media constantly are feeding us with.

Basically and evidently we are constantly being fooled by the doctrines propelled by our medical “authorities”.

Now being on page 146 I can hardly believe what I have read about vaccination practices! The power of teh medical doctrines in our society is just unbelievable – enforced by law and police power. Although what I read just now happened a hundred years ago the same thing seems to be around today as well if I understand Dr. Mercola right.

Firstly thanks Göran for the link re Gary Fettke, interestingly he received his letter around 3/10/2018 and a news article around 28/29/9/2018 was run here in OZ regarding the dangers of LCHF diets with a picture of a nice piece of steak surrounded by green veg. the claim being made is that this diet is damaging or could be destroying our micro biome so following the letter being sent (here in Oz we only have slow post) I figure someone knew about the letter, clearly someone of eminence really annoyed. No mention was made of the average Oz diet of salty, sugary, faux food that most eat here most of the time no issue there for their micro biome.

Your comment re vaccination is spot on, here in Oz vaccination is mandatory for all children, I can see a time very close when this will also apply to us oldies with flu, and pneumonia shots being mandatory and similar penalties and exclusions applying. With the current arrangements for children I believe that enrolment in schools, kinder, etc. cannot take place unless all vaccinations on the schedule have been done and for the poor who receive Social Security benefits some of that is forfeit until all the requirements have been met. We have just 2 groups that are confounding the issue the wealthy who can afford tutors for their children and a large community in northern NSW who have opted out of everything and live communally again with home schooling etc. These folk have no interest in either the carrot or the stick. There is only one viewpoint it seems and anyone who disagrees or queries is labelled a murderer or a lunatic and no doctor would dare make any noise as they can and have been struck off the register.

Thanks for the info re the book, I will get straight on to that and see if I can obtain a copy for my collection of interesting medical history.

I too have a comment stuck in moderation the link Orthomolecular News I added was regarding the ‘play book’ used to delay or stop entirely info re vitamins and the example was Vitamin D if this link does not work the post was the last one so anyone wanting to read it should be able to find it easily.

I guess that in the environment of Oz you describe Suzanne Humphries’ book would be a “killer” if people in the health care system were to read it but which seems rather improbable in the present fake media climate. Among the official unscientific medical vaccine believers she must certainly be a heretic in a Galileo Galilei sense.

Today I am more a “believer” in grass root actions since there is very little change to be expected from the medical establishment in my eyes although there has been some noteworthy exceptions. When corruption has reach critical levels “grass fires” get more probable.

President Trump was initially an outspoken sceptic on this issue and this was evidently a part of his own “popular” campaign and also when he appointed a “vaccine sceptic” (a Kennedy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr. ) to shed light on this issue through an appointed commission. Though I don’t now the status as of today.

Good to see that vitamin D has appeared in this debate. I doubt that I’ve had an adequate level since the summers of my childhood, 50-55 years ago when I ran around on the beach in bathing trunks. In hindsight, it may explain a lot of symptoms including slightly bowed legs, slightly curved spine and poor dental formation.

One finds online that MS may be a vitamin D deficiency disease. So may osteoporosis. Blood pressure may be higher in patients with inadequate vitamin D. The list seems to go on and on …

Norman,
Well I read in today’s Guardian, á new study that says that taking extra vitamin D is á waste of time!
When I was on speaking terms with my lipidist, he used to tell me that any positive effects I thought I saw in things like co-enzyme Q10 were placebo.
I love my placebo effects, all the benefits and less side effects.

My partner has tried a variety of supplements over the years, and the only one that clearly and obviously did something was Q10. Since the body makes less Q10 as we get older, I guess people benefit or not from Q10 according to how much they still have in their body. On that basis, I expect a lot of supplements help some people and not others.

Notably, therefore, in May and June 1990 the drug company Merck took out patents on the use of CoQ10 in combination with statin drugs. However, despite believing that the inclusion of CoQ10 with statins would be of “considerable benefit” to patients, Merck has never marketed any products containing this combination. We can therefore only assume that the company’s main motivation at the time it took out these patents was essentially to prevent others from doing so.

Alas, The Times did an appalling hit job this morning: ”Daily vitamin D pill ’makes no difference to strength of bones’”. It then went on to trash all vitamins: ”Vitamin supplements of any kind and do no good for healthy adults.” I despair.

(I have some comments stuck in moderation, have I pissed you off, or the Gods Of The Internet as this has also happened elsewhere). Maybe if I stopped being rude about dieticians and other clueless folk this would stop happening, just a thought)

Q10 is involved in ATP production and should be good for every cell that requires energy to stay alive. Statins reduce Q10 but the muscle problems are caused by other actions of statins. The fix is to stop the statin and then add Q10.

“increase in the expression of muscle specific E3-ligases (i.e. atrogin-1 and MuRF1) play a crucial role in statin-induced muscle fiber atrophy/damage and may help to explain muscle pain and weakness associated with statin-myopathy.”

Dr Kendrick, I am rereading The Great Cholesterol Con. In the discussion on Lp(a) you quote an article from the Journal of Lipid Research on CHD in Asian Indians. It says at the end “This study suggests that elevated levels of Lp(a) confers genetic predisposition to CHD in Asian Indians”.

You then go on to say: “By the way, forget the genetic bit and concentrate only on Lp(a) bit”.

Yes the dark force is striking back ! The aim is to discredit all supplements so that all are locked into buying their magic pills….Bugger what a script that would be for a play or film ! But I doubt it would happen..No funding..

In the meantime “We Happy Few” know the truth and are immunised from any infection by the pharmaceutical virus….

Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Vitamin K2, Vitamin E and all the rest…are our secret allies in leading long healthy lives…

With the main article being about FH, and some good discussion of LCHF lifestyle in the comments – is there any good resource to find out of effects of LCFH for people with FH – both on lipids and on CVD. Occasionally I read about FH people actually dropping their lipid levels with keto diet, but that seems more anecdotal than a systematic study. Any pointers to data or investigation into this would be appreciated.

It is strange to find insurance companies actually protecting their profits by pushing the truth!!

Big money pitted against big money.

I wonder if PCSK9 inhibitors will ultimately turn out to have some nasty side effects – because presumably too few people have taken them for us to know yet. Deliberately lowering the level of a chemical that is essential for life in well people seems very dangerous.

I do not know if you will see this, but I would be interested on your opinion on the suggestion, which I believe that the heart is not a pump. The heart is basically a helical ventricular band which takes in the blood by suction. This video is a good summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epx6DDreJlo To me this has always made more sense as the idea that the heart can pump thousands of litres of blood without fatigue non-stop is really ludicrous. The twisting motion of the band make much more sense and is more in line with the helical energy found in all of nature. In the womb blood flows in this fashion before the ‘heart’ is fully formed, with blood pressure caused by interrupting the circulation. Anyway, as with everything people who do not eat to understand will not.

– The heart is probably the most intensively-studied organ in the body. It is unlikely they have had the story wrong for several hundred years.

– The first astronauts had incredibly intensive medical studies done on them, including having pressure transducers fed into their hearts. I am not aware that any negative pressures due to suction were detected.

– Veins are flexible pipes and would collapse like rubber inner tubes if the blood were sucked out of them.

– Even if the heart did work by suction, that doesn’t change the laws of physics. To force X amount of blood through Y miles of blood vessels take a fixed amount of energy which must be provided by the heart, no matter whether it works by pressure or suction.

– Even if the heart did work in the helical fashion described, how does this change our behavior? Will we do anything different with this new knowledge? In other words, is it worth my time to view the video, apart from casual interest?

On the vit D study – from the horse’s mouth – We excluded trials of hydroxylated vitamin D analogues. (the active form) Trials with multiple interventions (eg, co-administered calcium and vitamin D) were eligible if the study groups differed only by use of vitamin D. Calcium is toxic. using doses greater than 800 IU per day. (ya but how much?) BUT – Dr. Robert Clarke, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Oxford said some of the trails didn’t have enough participants or used an insufficient dose of vitamin D. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(18)30265-1/fulltext

In case you are unaware, in America I guess some TV channels have begun to advertise flavored beet powder to increase nitric oxide levels. I have not seen the TV advertisement myself. I don’t watch those channels. My parents mentioned seeing the commercials, saying it is advertised all the time. I’ve seen others mention this also. The nitric oxide is for sports use. If it is a good seller imagine America might accidentally see fewer cardiac events if the nitric oxide theory is correct.

I bought some beet powder to increase nitric oxide levels myself. I’ve been taking it for little less than a week. I feel it has helped some, already. Hard to say though as I recently began avoiding milk and beef products and possibly that might be way I’m breathing easier. I bought the beet powder off of Amazon. It isn’t sold in the stores, at least not the grocery stores around here.

Soul – Good point but I would steer away from flavoured anything unless you have really looked into the ingredients. All artificial sweeteners are toxic. Make sure there is no soy product anywhere near anything you consume (except Tofu) Dr Mercola has a fermented beet capsule which i have been taking. The dose if you like is stronger with no taste. I take two in the morning and two at night. If I don’t take them I notice it. But I also take a high dose of Potassium, 5HTP and Magnesium citrate. I do feel significantly calmer and more at peace. Organic beet juice is good to drink also, i get the Lakewood Organic our beet juice and have a glass a day. Dr Berg has a good electrolyte powder drink also.

I am now “through” the book “Dissolving Illusions” by Suzanne Humphries. It was a tough reading, full of statistical facts, but it may have dissolved my last (?) “myth” I had about the “benefits” of medicines. (Well, well , well antibiotics remain since I still believe that there are facts and science to support this “myth”.)

The final sentence of the book is telling:

“The reality … is that vaccinology, as portrayed to the public today, amounts to writing religion on the back of ignorance.”

My own feeling is just now that being a vaccine “sceptic” today is equal to have been a heretic who publicly denied the existence of God a couple of hundred years ago.

Another thread hijack, but this gentleman is doing so well we can maybe learn something:

At 108 years old, still cuts hair 8 h / day, 5 days / week. Drives, does his own shopping, cooking, laundry, yardwork. Takes no medication, stays away from doctors, never needed glasses, has all his teeth, and the punchline: eats “thin” spaghetti to stay thin.

We don’t know if he has special genes, but he is ticking a lot of boxes (stay active, do satisfying work, stay socially involved, don’t get medicated) but not every box (no low carb, it seems).

What I find most amazing is that he does not even need reading glasses. Conventional wisdom has it that everyone’s lenses stiffen, requiring reading glasses by 50 by the latest, irrespective of diet and lifestyle.

Y’all need to see this. The reach of the little ole 7th Day Adventist Church is profound. I will tell you (Europeans) that 7th Day Adventists (and some of my friends are 7th Dayers) are extremely and vehemently against the Roman Catholic Church. I’m particularly disgusted with the secrecy. Many millions of people who are influenced by their publications would look a lot harder if they knew is was faith-driven. This article is writeen by Fetke’s wife.

> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “As you may know I am a member of an > organisation known as The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics > (THINCS). When I say this, people always laugh. I suppose it is better than > people shouting and screaming and slapping you repeatedly. The man who ” >

Dr Kendrick cannot provide individual patient advice over the Internet. UK General Medical Council regulations are clear that to do so would be a breach of medical standards that could result in disciplinary proceedings.

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